Electronic devices have become commonplace in most equipment on the ground from automobiles to telecommunications equipment as well as equipment in the air such as planes, missiles and satellites. Society has become accustomed to more innovative consumer products year after year, such as televisions, cell phones, fax machines, desk and lap top computers, to name a few, which products have proliferated over the last couple of decades and have become common place in our society. Such equipment or devices may have hundreds or even thousands of electrical connections that must be made between electronic circuit boards, bus wiring, wiring harnesses and input and output ports to provide the electrical connector pathways or highways needed to transport electrical signals needed for the electronic circuitry. The art of electrical connectors and contacts is very old and hundreds of different connectors have evolved throughout the last century. A few examples of connectors designed, in particular, to meet the needs of modern electronics are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,492,489 entitled "Four Way Audio Cable Adapter" to Chavakula (1996); U.S. Pat. No. 3,149,899 entitled "Electrical Contact Element" to Johanson (1962); U.S. Pat. No. 3,832,498 entitled "Aapter Enabling Telephone Switching Equipment Terminals To Be Wire Wrapped" to Lawson (1974); U.S. Pat. No. 4,090,771 entitled "Contact Assembly With Rotational Lock For Wire Wrap Termination" issued to Moulin (1978); U.S. Pat. No. 5,387,138 entitled "Printed Circuit Connector Apparatus and Method for Making the Same" to O'Malley (1995); U.S. Pat. No. 5,106,328 entitled "Contact Pin And Bushing Assembly" to Prochaska et al. (1992), and U.S. Pat. No. 5,439,391 entitled "Lead Adapter" to McEtchin et al. (1995).
Today with electrical component shrinking to unprecedented miniature sizes, connectors have followed suit and much effort is being placed in the area of connector technology to develop small scale connectors in mass quantities necessary to reliably make the many connections needed for densely populated electronic environments. In particular, pin and socket type connectors have gained popularity in the electronics industry and much effort has been made to make an improved pin/socket contacts. Such pin/socket contacts are very versatile and come in different configurations for connection to wires, circuit boards etc. For example, conventional pin/socket contacts typically have connection arrangements known in the industry as "tails" which take various shapes for use in a variety of circumstances such as square tails for wire wrapping, round tails for coupling to circuit board, or compliant tails for direct circuit board connections. Typically, the contacts are made of one piece. Therefore, for each particular size of pin or socket three separate contacts would be required to accommodate the three popular tail configurations, i.e., square, round and compliant. As a result, manufacturers or contact suppliers need to inventory a large number of contacts to satisfy the needs of customers requiring different tail configurations. In addition, there is the element of time to configure automatic screw machines to make the several different configurations.
The prior art has disclosed several two piece contact arrangements. However, such two piece contacts have not proven to be satisfactory for a number of reasons including material and manufacturing costs.
For example, U.S. Pat. No. 3,569,918 entitled "Multipiece Electrical Contact" to Arnold (1971) shows a contact having an cylindrically shaped insulating sleeve with a hole therethrough, one end to the insulator receiving a pin and the other end receiving a conductor. The sleeve accordingly provides the vehicle to couple the two metal contact portions together. Tails have also been coupled to a pin/socket contact by screwing the two together as illustrated in U.S. Pat. No. 3,210,720 entitled "Cable Connectors" to Harris (1961) which discloses a connector for use with high duty electrical cable, such cable being formed of one or more conductors, each of which embodies a plurality or strands, sheathed with filler strips and ground wires. The connector attached to the cable may be either a male member or a female member which in either case include a similar cylindrical section having at one end, a blind bore for receiving the end of the high duty electrical cable and at the other end provided with screw threads to threadably receive the corresponding threaded shank of either the female adapter of the male adapter, as the case may be. While this arrangement may be satisfactory for contacts that are not needed in mass quantities, it is not desirable for the vast array consumer electronics where quantities and cost are important factors.
Another example of a pin contact is illustrated in U.S. Pat. No. 5,399,110 entitled "Two Piece Male Terminal" to Morello et al. (1995) which includes a pin contact member and an attachment member which will ultimately receive a conventional insulated copper wire. The pin contact has a clamping portion at the rear end thereof, which clamping portion is swaged to define a post extending radially outwardly of the outer surface of the clamping portion. The attachment member has a slot which receives the post which is rolled onto the clamping portion. The post is coined to define a flange which engages the attachment member at locations surrounding the slot to securely retain the attachment member to the contact member. This arrangement requires a considerable amount of mechanical manipulation and is therefore undesirable where small size, cost and quantities are important. There is still a need for a pin/socket contact that is simple and inexpensive to manufacture, yet reliable in performance.